Vik Muniz and “Wasteland”

An photo of Vik Muniz’s work. These were based on classical paintings and each are made up of objects and garbage that he arranges on the floor. Click on the picture for a better and closer view!

I’ll admit that when I first saw a Vik Muniz’s photograph in the Phoenix Art Museum, although interesting,  I wasn’t that taken by it.  It was curious that he created an image out of objects and photographed it, but it seems like yet another art world gimick.  Being an artist who enjoys assemblage as well, I wondered why he simply didn’t make sculptures and show us the real objects like Tony Cragg or the like.

Here is a group arranging one of his pieces. It gives you a good idea of the scale of the piece.  It is 36 by 40 feet.  Click on the image and you’ll see it is made up entirely of paper cranes.  Made out of over two million cranes by New York city school children, they were then each sold to benefit those who were effected by the tsunami in Japan.  Is that cool or what?

Ah, but as you get to know someone, that is when you perhaps find yourself drawing either further away, or further in with them.  I’ll admit, I fell in.  The more I saw of his work, and after viewing the documentary “Wasteland” which chronicles his work with a group of trash-pickers in Brazil, I was impressed.  Here was a well known contemporary artist using his status for good and to help others, not just looking for additional ways to give himself more accolades.  Muniz’s work at least for me began looking very thoughtful and not just about doing flashy contemporary art, but perhaps it was actually about making this world a better place.  What a concept eh?  I highly recommended the film, and now his work.  Below is the trailer:

 

Stream

"Stream" 18"x8", oil on wooden panel, 2012

Here is one of the other pieces that I recently finished and have in the faculty art show that is up for its last week here.  This painting came very slowly, but I think it part it was due to the very nature of the piece.  Some things must come out in time.  I’ll post the sculpture this is based on in the future.

Part of the concept behind this piece was that the tears of the one character is the very thing that is keeping the little fish alive.  Conceptually, something I have found true in the testimony of others lives and my own.  As difficult as sorrow can be, it can have some very amazing fruit in life, that I believe can’t come about in any other way.

Well, there’s something to contemplate at least for today….

 

John Frame’s Broken Narrative

A still of Pere Jules one of John Frames character for his tale.

D'Artand Confronts the Tottentanzers Before the Gate of Desire

While in Los Angeles last summer I discovered John Frame, a sculptor I admired from Southern California, had a new exhibit entitled Three Fragments of a Lost Tale at the Huntington.  I had been introduced to his work through a fellow artist some time ago.  It was a delight of a show.  It was a dive into another world created by the Frame’s hand, and a grin erupted on my face when reading the recent newsletter for the Portland Art Museum. The exhibition is coming to Oregon February 18-May 27.  Don’t miss it.

The exhibition consists of a running film of “fragments” of a story called The Tale of the Crippled Boy.  Around the gallery space, sculptures of the figures from the film are arranged in tenebristic settings.  Large  photo stills of the story grace the walls as well.

Yes there are obvious reasons while I like this man’s work:  he creates characters that he casts into narratives with one another, there is a profound sense of mystery to the pieces,  craftsmanship is important in the creation of the work, and his work actually seems to have something to offer to the viewer beyond just tantalizing then with irony, or a trendy “gotcha” aesthetic. There is a profound sense that resonates with me in Frame’s work that the ordinary can become extraordinary, as well as the artists desire to create characters that carry truth or insight to the viewer.

Take some time on his website.   He has much of the video work that he’s done there, as well as images of the work:  http://johnframesculpture.com/the-tale  Enjoy!

(here is a link to Portland Art Museums site as well:  http://www.portlandartmuseum.org/)

Frames, O-Man

 

More Small Songs

"What Was" watercolor with oil varnish and assemblage. (approximately 10"x10") 2011 The snake I actually bought from the 6 year old son of a friend of mine when he was selling some of his toys on his porch to make some money. He's responsible for the snakes tail and head color, as well as the black section in between- not me. I thought he made good color choices!

I Thought I’d post for you more of the “small songs” that were featured for the first time at the Bellevue Festival for the Arts.  See the earlier post on July 28th for more info about these.  I had a great time creating these works playing with the exterior/interior aspects of the work.  Enjoy!

"Middle England" watercolor on wood with oil varnish/assemblage. Aprox 8"x8" 2011 I painted this in a train traveling from London to Bath. The women next to us in the train got progressively drunker throughout the trip (downing between four our them I believe about three bottles of wine). When we got off the train in Bath one said to me "Oh look there, you painted that nice painting on the train, and all we go was pissed!"

"Lion and Lamb; Bath, England" watercolor on board with oil varnish/assemblage Approximately 12"x 9," 2011. I was struck at my luck when I found the tabacco tin in a junk shop in Amity Oregon, and felt like it was a dead on match. The hand is actually from a saint and was bought in Belgium. For this one I sat out across the street in a garden next to a church to lay out the initial image for a half an hour or so.

 

A Revised Street Where You Live

"On The Street Where You Live" Tim Timmerman, oil on wood and assemblage, 22"x22"4" 2010

An image showing you light behind the rods that shows you their variety of colors.

On October 4th I put up a post regarding this piece.  Unfortunately I didn’t have time to take a good photo of it.  Here’s a better one than the first.

This work was created in collaboration with a local show that dealt with rendering trees in our fair little town.  The tree at the top of the image is based on a loopy old tree a block down the street from me that I walk by almost daily.  The image on the left is actually a graph of my street, the glass rods indicate the placement of the trees (there are actually three different colors of rods, each depending on the size of the tree).  My house is second to the bottom on the left in the graph.  I own a scotty dog, that does like to bark at the local squirrels, referenced by the assemblage on the right.  And yes, like any neighborhood worth its salt,  kids like to play on and around the street as found in the central sewn image that I adjusted for my use.

Go say “hi” to your neighbors….

 

Surrender Everything

A detail of "Surrender Everything"

The largest piece in the current show I have at University of Portland is a work I’ve been plugging away on for some time entitled, “Surrender Everything.”  For the work, I wanted to create sculptural figures that were a bit more dominant than they can often be in my work.  I was pleased with the results.  It took some negotiating as to how to piece it together, but through a lot of screws, and deciding to bolt the figures to the base, we had success.

If you look at an earlier post I wrote on St. Jerome you can see a painting that has the lion I based mine on for this work, along with one of the images  of Jerome I was looking at to create the large wooden figure.  The lion is a development of the gouache and watercolor images I have been doing smaller over the years that I would also create temporary versions of on gallery walls.

I wondered what would happen if I actually made a illuminated manuscript type figure large, that is actually a physical part of the piece.  He very much “speaks his mind” in the work visually, and I like how he references too the folk tradition of wooden cut outs.

Hope your Sunday is going well.  Hope to see you at the closing reception a week from Thursday (the 3rd) at University of Portland (from 5-7).

Tim Timmerman, "Surrender Everything" oil on wood, found objects, glass, cast glass, and plaster. Approximately 3 1/2'x 5' (click image to see image larger).

 

Put Together at the Minthorne Art Gallery

You know you gotta love it when an artist takes the ordinary and makes the extraordinary.

I have the privilege of running the Minthorne Art Gallery at George Fox, and this next month have curated a show featuring two assemblage artists, Chris Giffin and Kay Worthington.  They both make exceptionally playful work that are inventive and a delight.  I encourage you to drop by and see the show if you have a chance.  It’s a blast.

Oregon Art Beat featured Chris recently in one of their television segments.   Take the time to watch the video on line at the link below. It’s a lot of fun to see her studio and working practice: http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/segments/view/856

Why I bet you’re going to want to go nail or glue something together after all of this!

 

“Keeping Vigil” at University of Portland

I have a solo show in 2011 coming up in January through February at the University of Portland.  In it will be the majority of the mixed media assemblages and oil paintings that I have been working on for the past year.  Here is the announcement:

(Click the text to make it larger so you can actually read it!)

 

Sand Casting on the Oregon Coast

Relaxing on a log, a set of sand cast faces I made this fall on the Oregon coast.

Tools of the trade a box of goodies waiting to be used and a set of casts setting up.

For years, since I begun teaching at George Fox we always do an art retreat in the fall on the Oregon coast in Newport.  Being the sculpture professor that I am, we have to take advantage of being on the coast, and do a little art project out there.  What better sculpture project to do in the sand but sand casting?!

The students and I always have a great time, and sometimes actually create something that looks semi-decent.  Every year I make about two to three “faces.”  This past year I brought in a variety of small trinkets and assemblage material and  went to town and created over ten.  There were a couple of pieces that didn’t survive due to a sneaker wave that wiped out a whole community of our pieces that we were working on, but all in all we had a very productive day.

We’ll see if something comes of these critters.  You may have seen versions of them showing up in some of the 2-D work I was doing last fall, what happens to these guys we’ll see….

Go make something.

"Bottle Nose" waiting in his little hole for the plaster so he can be cast.

"Bottle Nose" complete and out of the sand drying. Kind of fun teeth huh?

 

Millions of Bits and Pieces

Mary McCleary, "What is Hidden Everywhere" mixed media collage on paper

Mary McCleary, "A Hundred Familiar Objects Which No Longer Exist" mixed media collage on paper

I met Mary McCleary years back at a conference when I got to see a broad swath of her work at an exhibition she was having in Dallas.  I immediately became a fan. It’s also a delight to meet an artist who is as kind and as approachable as her work as McCleary was.

Speaking about her today in one of my classes I thought I’d share her work with you here if you haven’t seen it.  She is a meticulous narrative painter at heart with a wonderful sense of depth, insight, and irony in her work.  Technically the pieces are just a wonder to behold, as she constructs them out of thousands of little objects: painted chips, twigs, rope and trinkets.  Check out her site that is overflowing with images of artistic integrity, tradition, and innovation at:  http://www.marymccleary.com/index.html

(Click on the photos in this post to see them larger.)

Mary McCleary, "Praising the Beauty of What is Transient" mixed media collage on paper

Mary McCleary, "Allegory of the Senses" mixed media collage on paper